Tom Hanks In Talks to Play Live-Action ‘Pinocchio’s Geppetto

It’s easy to be skeptical of Disney’s ongoing project to remake all its classic animated features in live-action. Some of the movies have been good (Cinderella!) but others have felt like blatant cashgrabs. The onslaught gets a little exhausting; Beauty and the Beast and Christopher Robin and Dumbo and Aladdin and The Lion King (sort of) and on and on and on.

But then you hear that Disney wants to make a live-action Pinocchiowith director Paul King — the guy who made the Paddington movies — and Tom Hanks and ... it must be admitted that that sounds like a pretty good idea.

The Hollywood Reportersays Hanks is in “early talks” to play Geppetto in the new Pinocchio. That’s about all the concrete info they have at this time — except to note that another Pinocchio project is currently in competitive development over at Netflix, where Guillermo Del Toro is supposedly writing and directing his own adaptation of the material, based on Carlo Collodi’s children’s novel from 1883.

That project sounds mighty interesting as well. But King’s work on Paddington and Paddington 2 marked him as an up-and-coming talent to watch. (Seriously; they are wonderful children’s films. Seek them out if you’ve missed them. I liked the second one more than my daughter did.) And combining him with America’s Dad to play one of fiction’s great fathers sounds like an ideal combination. You’ve won this round Disney...